Ive had 3 MP3 players (don't ask, I keep losing them...). By far my favorite is my IPOD Nano. I know it's more $$$ by IMHO well worth it!

I paid $80 for my 256MB Rio Cali (holds about 65 tunes) - but I've seen it for around $50 on Overstock.com.

*my* problem with the iPod is that it is not compatible with the two online music services I use - Napster and Yahoo, which I much prefer to iTunes because the prices are better, and both give you the ability to download and listen to songs without having to purchase them - DH is a musician and when he gets called for gigs, he is usually able to listen to the songs on either Napster or Yahoo and become familiar with them without having to pay a buck for a song he might never want to listen to again we have some pretty decent speakers on our home PC and are looking into getting a digital media receiver such as the Roku SoundBridge so he can listen to Napster in his studio (which makes our place sound a LOT bigger than it is - the 'studio' being part of the family room of our 1 BR place...) rather than bringing his bass and amp into the breakfast area where our home office is located.

My next MP3 player is going to be a 'subscription enabled' one - then I'll upgrade my Napster to "Napster2Go" and just load as many tunes as I want in my player without having to pay for each one individually (Yahoo's subscription service comes with this, but they don't have nearly as many songs as Napster does...). The prices of the subscription players are really coming down - iRiver has one for about 100 bucks now.

I have an MP3 player from Creative - a 40GB! Zen jukebox - that I love for everything except weight lifting. It's larger than most 3"x4.5"x.75" and doesn't like to stay clipped on my clothes and it's too large/heavy to hang around my neck or wear on my sleeve. On any cardio machine, I can stick it in the drink holder, but doing weights I twist and move around too much for it to stay clipped. I'm actually considering getting a little cheapie one just for playing music while I exercise.

I have a Samsung reeeeally tiny 1 gig player with a radio, and a 6 gig ipod mini. The Samsung looked like a great idea- it weighs about an ounce and I barely know that it's there when I run BUT...the controls are so tiny and non-intuitive that I wanted to stomp on it. After a lot of polling people at the gym, I bought the now discontinued mini and love it. Yes, it's bigger, but the controls make sense and I can see the screen without holding it 2 inches from my face.

Mel

That was my gripe with a lot of little players too Mel - these old eyes, which have worn glasses for near-sightedness since I was 10 - just can't do the tiny screens, never mind the controls. I'm thinking more of a Nano, but the price (since it would be a second player) keeps getting in my way...

Love, love, love my Nano. I had two cheapo Wal-Mart Ilo mp3 players that broke when they were less than a month old. I finally decided just to spend the extra money and get the Nano and it was well worth it. I agree that the playlists are great. itunes is so much easier to use than Windows Media Player too. One more vote for iPod Nano!

Chickadee

I have the Nano also and highly recommend it!